What's in a name?   Flight.  A motif is an idea or a theme that is repeated or carried through an individual work:  flying is a recurring image found in Flight. 

 

    The motif of flying/flight appears when Zits recalls racing remote model airplanes with his former foster daddy, Edgar.  After winning several races, Edgar becomes convinced that there is something wrong with his plane; yet, after Zits and Edgar switch planes, Zits still wins and even rebukes Edgar after he suggests that the "new" plane is also defective.  Zits says mockingly that the fault lies simply with the pilot.  This adds insult to injury and it proves too much for Edgar.  In retaliation, he cooly crashes both model airplanes, "...calmly destroy[ing] six hundred dollars' worth of model airplane. Crash, crash"(11).  Zits reflects on this saying, "Yes, that's my life, a series of cruel bastards and airplane crashes.  Twenty little airplane crashes.  I am a flaming jet, crashing into each new foster family"(11).   This is not the only  time flight is used as a metaphor  for Zits and his life.

 

    In Chapter Two, the idea of flying/flight is revisited when Zits cusses out his new foster father and runs for the hills.  Here, he is a superhero:  "After I cuss out my new foster father, I put on my cape and fly right through the roof of the house"(16). Flight is simply Zits's way of dealing with stressors in his life. With his mother gone and his father God-knows-where, Zits has nothing holding him down and a good example -from his father- of how to deal with everything: run away; Zits uses flight as a coping strategy.

 

    Finally, flight is referenced several times when Zits inhabits Jimmy's body.  Jimmy wants to die because he has just been caught by his wife with his paramour, and incidentally he trained a terrorist named Abbad, who happens to be his best friend, how to fly which resulted in Abbad crashing into downtown Chicago.   This is where the  flight imagery becomes particularly eery:  "Alone in his airplane, Jimmy flies.  I am with him.  Jimmy flies out over the water, over the great lake, until the blue of the water and the blue of the sky are the same blue.  He flies until he cannot see any land.  Then he pushes down on the controls and sends the plane plummeting toward the water...Jimmy stays silent all the way down"(130).

 

    Flight also serves as an apt metaphor for the frenzied pace of the novel.  Zits moves through time, space, homes, and identities quickly.  Despite his persistent introspection,  he chronically seems one step behind the manic movements of his life.  Young people have a tough time adapting to change, so those who have  little but difference to count on may feel like they live in a pinball machine.  Violence, alcohol, war - these are all associated with a rapid and rapidly changing life.  Zits inhabits the body of a pilot, but even this literal flying seems smooth compared to his emotional unrest.  Zits is someone who is ultimately flying from one part of life to the next.  While the ending leads to the possibility of consistency, his history of unrest leaves this as a question rather than an answer.